Monday, March 13, 2017

UK : Church leaders: Pharmacists could be forced to dispense lethal drugs

The British Catholic Church has predicted
that pharmacists could be forced to dispense lethal drugs under plans to
prohibit conscientious objection on the grounds of religion.

Proposals by the General Pharmaceutical Council, the regulatory body
that sets professional standards for the industry throughout Britain,
were criticized by the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and the
Anscombe Bioethics Centre, a Catholic institute serving the Catholic
Church in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The pharmaceutical council announced in December that it wished to
change "the expectations of pharmacy professionals when their religion,
personal values or beliefs might ... impact on their ability to provide
services, and shift the balance in favour of the needs and rights of the
person in their care."

It intends to order pharmacists to "take responsibility for ensuring
that person-centred care is not compromised because of personal values
and beliefs."

"We understand the importance of a pharmacy professional's religion,
personal values or beliefs, but we want to make sure people can access
the advice, care and services they need from a pharmacy, when they need
them," said Duncan Rudkin, chief executive of the General Pharmaceutical
Council. "We recognize that this represents a significant change."

Interested parties were given until March 7 to express their views on the proposed changes.In an undated submission, Anscombe director David Jones suggested
that the changes would force pharmacists to dispense the morning-after
pill, which in some cases acts by preventing a fertilized ovum from
implanting into the uterus.

"In relation to termination of pregnancy, most abortions are now
medical rather than surgical, and the drugs which cause an abortion are
dispensed by pharmacists," Jones said in a paper posted on the Anscombe
website.

He also warned the regulator that if assisted suicide laws were
changed in the United Kingdom to permit the practice, then pharmacists
would have no right to object to dispensing lethal drugs to customers
who wished to kill themselves.

"In the future, requests could even include requests to dispense
drugs for assisted suicide: requests with which many pharmacists will
rightly be reluctant to comply," Jones said. "Having conceded so much in
terms of the wishes of the person using the pharmacy, the council may
find it difficult to retrace its steps and re-establish professional
control centred on the person's genuine health interests."

The proposals, he continued, risked "eviscerating the profession of
concern for the genuine health interests of people using the pharmacy."

A change could also "create an atmosphere that is hostile to religious people in particular," Jones added.

Auxiliary Bishop Paul Mason of Southwark, responding March 7 on
behalf of the English and Welsh bishops, told the pharmaceutical council
that its proposal "seems to imply that conscientious objection, whether
motivated by religious or other concerns, is an obstacle to ensuring
patient-centred care."

"It appears to suggest that having a moral conscience and
patient-centred care are not compatible facets of a pharmacist's
profession," he said in an excerpt emailed to Catholic News Service March 7. "However, we contend that being a person of conscience is, in fact, a requirement of any health care professional."

Rosemary Baker, a retired Catholic pharmacist from Wirral, England, told CNS
in a March 7 email that during her career, she had occasionally refused
to dispense the morning-after pill, but had always explained her
reasons with "understanding and respect."

"Such a refusal under the proposed standard would be very likely to
be considered as a breach of the patient's rights to care and place the
pharmacist in breach of the professional standards," said Baker, a
former lecturer in pharmacy law and health care ethics at Liverpool John
Moores University.